Was COVID-19 made inside a Chinese lab? | Under Investigation

[Music] tonight it's one of the greatest mysteries we've ever faced where did the deadly virus that shot down the world come from did it actually emerge in a bat infested copper mine eight years ago in remote southwest china where three men who worked there died of a disease almost identical to covet 19 and what happened to the infected human blood samples when they were brought here to a laboratory in wuhan in the city at the centre of the covert crisis what are the chances and where are the answers it's been the forbidden question but does the world have the right to ask did covert 19 come from a lab tonight as the world health organization prepares to release its report into the origins of the virus we'll investigate the pandemic bats is where we start yes the claims of cover-up and conspiracy of opportunism and payback [Music] and the condemnation the china virus the china plague tungs lou has china been unfairly damned or has it known the truth about the virus all along the independent expert came to study the origins of the kobe 19 virus has completed its trip to china good evening i'm liz hayes and this is under investigation [Music] joining me tonight mary louise mcclause professor of epidemiology at new south wales university who is an advisor to the world health organization on infection prevention and control if this has leaked out from the laboratory you have to look at what was the transmissibility of it jason yatsen lee successful australian businessman and human rights lawyer he is the son of hong kong migrants it is literally like we're building the death star bates gill professor of asia pacific security studies at macquarie university covert 19 simply intensified what was already well in motion the suspicions of china and the chinese suspicions of the west jackson rhine doctor and global science editor of cnet the world's largest tech website was it kind of like mind-blowing to you that there's this research being undertaken yeah i don't think many people know about this i'm just so disturbed nikolai petrovsky professor of medicine at flinders university who's working on a covert vaccine but who has also conducted research which he says indicates the virus came from a laboratory why did the world not take this seriously because they were misinformed and from shanghai we're joined by professor chen hong director of australian studies at the east china normal university i think this is quite unfair to say that china was deliberately withholding the facts thank you all so much for joining us i'm going to start with you nikolai do you think that this virus could well have come from a laboratory we cannot exclude a laboratory origin of the virus it's possible that it came from a zoonotic transmission from an animal to a human but it's equally plausible that it may have come from an accidental leak of a virus that was being grown in a laboratory you've got two competing theories here you've got nikolai's talking about an accidental leak or you've got an accidental jump from a bat an intermediate species into a human in both cases i still actually think it's accidental the big debate over the origin of the virus which is dividing the scientific and political world starts in a remote abandoned copper mine in southwest china eight years ago where a coronavirus very similar to the one that causes covert 19 was found in bats it's 2012 the abandoned mine is near the tiny town of tugun deep in china's southwest yuan province unknown to the men working there the bats populating the mine and the bat feces they were shoveling contained an unknown coronavirus that would later be named ratg coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that attack the upper respiratory tract [Applause] around two weeks after entering the mine the miners fell sick with a strange flu-like illness these chinese medical records kept secret for years showed their symptoms were identical to covert 19. the symptoms of the infection that they got in that mind they were things like dry cough there were high fevers dr jonathan latham is executive director of the bioscience resource project in new york all of those symptoms we would recognize them today as covid19 symptoms you know pretty diagnostic if you showed up at a hospital or a doctor's office with those symptoms they would have you nailed down as a covet patient three of the six infected miners died one lingering in hospital for five months before succumbing to the strange illness time enough according to dr latham's research for the bat virus infecting the sick minor to mutate into a coronavirus that was now capable of being passed on to other humans and so scientists began to ask were these men the first victims of covert 19 eight years before it erupted in wuhan what we're suggesting is that the length of time that these miners were in the hospital they were basically incubating this virus for a very long time and so that gave the virus an opportunity to evolve to adapt to human lungs blood samples from the dying miners were sent to china's highest security bio lab 1500 kilometers to the north to the wuhan institute of virology they had tests that they sent to the wuhan institute of biology which tested positive for a coronavirus and samples of the back coronavirus taken from the feces in the mine were also taken to the wuhan lab comparison tests would later reveal it was a 96 match to covert 19. the virus that first struck in wuhan in december 2019. the very simple data elements on the ground all point to the likelihood that this virus came from a lab as the world seeks answers about the origins of the virus what was once dismissed as a conspiracy theory has become a legitimate scientific debate is it possible that covert 19 already existed and was being researched and accidentally escaped from the wuhan lab sparking the pandemic but it's a debate many scientists reject the lab-based scenarios are all conspiracy theories because they propose that there's a scientist somewhere and not just one scientist but a group of scientists who are covering up that is the essence of a conspiracy theory dr robert gary is professor of microbiology and immunology at tulane medical school in new orleans he agrees there is evidence that the wuhan institute of virology was carrying out research on the bat coronavirus called ratg13 and on samples from the dead miners but he says it's scientifically impossible for the bat virus to have mutated into covert 19 either in the lab or in the bodies of the dying miners the theory of life in the rit g13 somehow evolved in some of the minors that got sick is also not feasible not possible that would take about 50 years of natural evolution the way to think about this is to say if all the evidence that was in favor of a lab escape was in favor of a natural origin and the amount of evidence there was in favor of a natural origin was on the side of a lab escape there would be no disagreement about what happened here nikolai bats is where we start yes we do know that these coronaviruses are in bats so how did it cross from a bat to a human a virus that's optimized to infect a bat is not optimized to infect a human so often they'll come via intermediary species for covert 19 there is no evidence of an animal that sits between us and the bats and is that why you feel there are compelling reasons to feel it's come from a laboratory i think it would be wrong to shut down one line of that questioning and say that's conspiracy theory only leaving us with the one possibility which is it came from an animal as a scientist we have to explore both possibilities until we can at least exclude one and we can't do that right now what we do know is that the miners appeared to have antibodies against a coronavirus but it doesn't tell you what coronavirus can i also say it also doesn't tell you that that was cause of their death or their infection because you may get antibodies because you've been exposed but it doesn't mean you've got disease except in this case i mean you know i've read the the medical thesis and i guess i'm a doctor myself and what's described there both the patient symptoms the course of the disease their biochemistry and the serology says these miners were infected with a coronavirus we're stopped by the police lying in wait for us this is a system that doesn't care for questions attempts by international journalists to visit the copper mine in china have been thwarted it's only added to suspicions that authorities there don't want outsiders investigating this highly contentious theory at the time the bat virus ratg-13 was found in the copper mine the most secure laboratory in china for the study and containment of viruses was the wuhan institute of virology it was and still is run by xi jiangli who's known as the bat woman because of her work with bat diseases and who has confirmed that she did take samples of the copper mine virus to study in wuhan but it's the type of research that was taking place here that raises eyebrows and adds weight to the theory that covert 19 came from this laboratory it involved the manipulation of viruses for research which made them incredibly dangerous [Applause] reina mcintyre is professor of global biosecurity at the new south wales university she says the bat virus that infected the miners in the copper mine could have been deliberately mutated into covert 19 through the controversial and risky research technique called gain of function engineering the genetic engineering of a pathogen can be done in different ways one way of doing it is called gain of function research which is where you pass the virus through an animal host over and over again so you're basically speeding up nature you're like speeding up evolution by hundreds or thousands of years that's you know well-established technique xi jiang li has confirmed that she and her team conducted gain of function engineering on bat coronaviruses at the wuhan institute of virology [Music] nikolai gain of function engineering for the layman so essentially we take a virus that we consider to be a potential threat say uh influenza virus from birds we know that the spanish flu that killed potentially hundreds of millions of people in 1918 came from a bird virus that crossed over to humans so we have a whole lot of other bird and influenza viruses which don't cross over to humans so the idea here is to try and create one that does so essentially we harvest an influenza virus from current birds that isn't causing a pandemic and we now try to insert genetic features into that virus that now would enable it to cause the human pandemic scientifically i mean what's the gain what's the good bit about that well the gain is understanding the enemy viruses out there in the wild are our enemy so the idea here is that by studying the enemy and even manipulating the the enemy to see how it could be even stronger maybe that will help us in defending ourselves against the enemy there's some who say the risk is we now have created something that didn't exist in nature which is a highly lethal human virus and if that was to leak we have devastation this is like a really important issue in general not just around coronavirus i saw jason sort of shaking his head kind of being like was it was it kind of was it kind of like mind blowing to you that there's this research being undertaken yeah i don't think many people know about this i'm just so disturbed that this goes on and i don't think it should go on because it's just so intrinsically dangerous if we are engineering a virus that could wipe out humankind it is literally like we're building the death star and if something goes wrong then everybody dies uh i mean it's i find it shocking i think going to function engineering this engineering which is horrific in your mind and mine too that is bad isn't it in western laboratories it was outlawed in the united states it's now been actually brought in interestingly when it was banned in the united states the research was actually moved to the wuhan institute of virology because it wasn't banned in china and so in fact at one point the u.s government was funding the gain of function research that we've seen published from the wuhan institute of virology but it is a fact that it is legal to undertake this research currently in pretty well most countries of the world coming up i don't think the wet market is the origin of the pandemic investigating the wuhan laboratory this is not an independent organization nor an independent investigation and scientific debate shut down by the denier in chief there's nothing positive about what happened in china if we can discredit him for saying that we can discredit him for a lot of other things that's next on under investigation a coronavirus found in bats in a remote chinese copper mine kills three miners in 2012. their illness eerily similar to covet 19. the virus samples are studied in the biohazard laboratory in the city where the pandemic first broke wuhan [Music] the wuhan lab has been conducting highly risky research designed to genetically engineer highly lethal human viruses in order to study them it is literally like we're building the death star so could covert 19 have accidentally leaked from this laboratory we cannot exclude a laboratory origin of the virus i think it would be wrong to shut down one line of that questioning and say that's conspiracy theory the world health organization the who is the united nations watchdog body tasked with sorting out fact from fiction its final report into the origin of the virus is to be released this week new south wales university epidemiologist professor mary louise mcclause is an advisor to the who the big deal about the lab is to try and determine the possibilities i guess isn't it mary louise if this has leaked out from the laboratory you have to look at what was the transmissibility of it how many people would it leak out into or would it leak out into some sort of cloud to be able to become an enormous problem by january so that leak would have to have then caused an enormous number of people to be exposed and it would have to have been covered up yes it would have to be covered up but i don't get the sense that china has wanted to cover up because they really want to protect their population the who investigative team traveled to wuhan earlier this year and included australian professor dominic dwyer when i spoke to him while he was in wuhan he said he believed the lab was definitely part of their mission you go with an open mind and you follow the science does that open mind include ruling out or ruling in a leak from the wuhan lab the laboratory leak is a very reasonable hypothesis because it's happened before throughout history and in many countries so these things can happen then you've got to look at what sort of leak was it was it one of the viruses that they had in the lab and accidentally was transmitted or was there perhaps more sinister research and so on done they're all being considered what would you consider to be a failure what would you say will be the problem if you come away from there not feeling like you've achieved what you needed to i think the failure would be that if we didn't get the information we request i think the failure is if we don't get the cooperation that we as an expert group think we need if that's refused ultimately then that would be a problem on february 9 after scarcely two weeks on the ground in wuhan who team leader peter ben embarak initially announced the lab leak theory would not be investigated it was very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place [Music] the origin of the virus is now viewed as political dynamite and the wh has been accused of having a history of not wanting to upset china that view was not helped when at the same press conference chinese scientists were allowed to promote the widely debunked claim that covert 19 was brought into china in frozen ii can persist in conditions found in frozen food packaging and culturing products in this case indicating that it can be carried long distance on coaching products [Music] the reaction by many was to brand the who mission a whitewash and later some scientists on the wuhan team reported deep frustrations in their attempts to obtain any detailed data from the wuhan institute of virology but less than a week later in a complete turn around the head of the who doctor tedris cabrasus went public stating that all theories for the origin of the virus would be investigated for their final report i wish to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and studies and we will continue working to get the information we need to answer the questions that still need to be answered what would you like the who team to be able to get hold of well i would like them to be able to get hold to essentially all the lab books and records of the various committees within the institute that would outline exactly what the experiments done were and which viruses they were handling and i think to be totally transparent that's what i would like to see the who have free and unlimited access to let's make a quick comment here about the who i agree very much that that is the sort of investigation that needs to be undertaken but even if there is unfettered access etc etc and the months that will be required to undertake this kind of examination does take place at the end of the day the who is owned and operated by the sovereign states of the united nations one of which is china and a very important one at that and so where i get concerned is that the word independent is simply not really accurate this is not an independent organization nor an independent investigation professor chen perhaps i should bring you in here do you agree that the wuhan laboratory should be a place that we can go into and investigate just to put to bed these sorts of questions there's no such thing as china trying to prevent the the world from accessing the institute of virulent cheaters or complete openness for china it is all open i need to make the point that there is enormous scientific support for the theory that the coronavirus occurred naturally having passed from bats to another animal possibly a pangolin transported to wuhan and then made the leap to humans in a wet market where wildlife is sold as food but what is puzzling for scientists is it's now known that many of the first covert 19 victims were not connected to the market in wuhan where it was first thought the virus emerged i don't think the wet market is the origin of the pandemic because the first two cases hadn't been to the wet market from the wuhan cluster and half of the cases in that cluster had not been to the wet market and despite extensive testing no trace of the covert 19 virus was found in the animals that was sold at the market they went to the wet market they took samples they took environmental samples but none of those samples showed a coronavirus in the animals that were sampled so at juan on seafood market there's no animal samples that we know of that have a size coronavirus that could be an ancestor to what we see today and that has affected the world essentially but if the issue of how the pandemic began wasn't already held hostage to global politics when covert 19 hit the us first decimating new york the scientific debate about the origin of the virus was also hijacked by politics by none other than america's denier in chief because of the chinese virus what happened about three months ago it looked like we were in big trouble and we were and i got it back together the discussion about china's role in the pandemic was distorted and to a large extent derailed by the blame game so enthusiastically enforced by former american president donald trump the china virus the china plague kung flu the doctors would say well did trump's rhetoric impede conversation about any alternative in the world of covert and how it might have come about absolutely you know scientifically i think the minute trump blurted out that he'd read a report that said this could be a laboratory leak i guess the scientific establishment then said well if trump said that we have to drive the opposite agenda to prove that trump doesn't know what he's talking about trump may not know what he's talking about but i think there was this counter-attack by saying well if we can discredit him for saying that we can discredit him for a lot of other things so it was unfortunate that he even came into the debate the unwarranted accusation made by the u.s on hearsay evidence against china is irresponsible and disregards the facts and even hides ulterior motives science got caught up in the politics and everything seemingly was thrown out the window it's correct to say that because of trump's ideas sort of vocalizing the lab league theory as his own he basically pushed all those people to say hold up we need to stop this trump's going to go on this tangent start claiming china that's making bioweapons or whatever it is and trump's idea of the leak got tied in with an actual legitimate investigation that needs to take place with the laboratory there's nothing positive about what happened in china having to do with china reacted angrily and it seems punitively against anyone who questioned it and an example of that is when australia call for an independent international inquiry into the origins of the virus it would seem entirely reasonable and sensible that the world would want to have an independent assessment of how this all occurred in china's view prime minister scott morrison was already in the camp of donald trump and his call came hot on the heels of trump's inflammatory rhetoric i think that there should be an independent inquiry but you know did we australia need to lead it how we went about it i read somewhere that you know we just gotten off the phone from trump and then we went public so it just looked bad it looked like a political setup uh i think actually in china you know people in china feel that australia has been joining with the united states to bully china not the other way around repeatedly we see the a lot of instances in which australia has been initiating uninvited attacks upon china as a way to uh joining forces as i said you know with the united states to attack to post this attack on china coming up somehow this is their fault and they need to bear responsibility secret cameras in wuhan final proof of a cover-up from the beginning why did the world not take this seriously because they were misinformed that's next on under investigation [Music] because of the chinese virus what happened about three months ago it looked like we were in big trouble and we were and i got it back together former u.s president donald trump almost single-handedly derailed any serious scientific debate about the possibility that the covert 19 virus could have leaked from the wuhan institute of virology even though the lab's chief scientist ji zhang glee admitted her team was studying a closely related bat virus that killed three miners eight years before the pandemic struck i've read the medical thesis and both the patient symptoms the course of the disease says these miners were infected with a coronavirus there continue to be questions over whether the world health organization is the right group to lead an independent investigation into the origin of covert the word independent is simply not really accurate this is not an independent organization or an independent investigation there is also concern about the controversial genetic engineering technique called gain of function which the wuhan lab was engaged in to create lethal human viruses i'm just so disturbed that this goes on and i don't think it should go on because we are engineering a virus that could wipe out humankind and there is still the question about what chinese authorities knew about the disease and when they knew it there is a view in the west that china covered up or at best downplayed the seriousness of the virus outbreak that contention has been forcefully and at times angrily denied by china with some officials saying the suggestion borders on racism but we've obtained footage shot in wuhan that seems to support an early cover-up by china [Music] as the virus took hold in late december 2019 doctors were silenced and disciplined [Music] and one of the first to express his concerns dr lee weng liang was threatened with arrest and later died from the virus at great personal risk a citizen journalist in wuhan covertly filmed these interviews with senior medical professionals they say from the very beginning there was no doubt the virus was spreading from human to humans those doctors reveal that chinese authorities ordered them to lie about how quickly and easily the virus spread [Music] and they say authorities allowed chinese lunar new year celebrations to proceed knowing the health risks [Music] professor chen from everything we see china did downplay this virus from the beginning do you agree with that at the very beginning of the outbreak in gohan you know people were simply to you know taken by surprise and people were simply you know not understanding the nature of the virus of the disease and also how it spreads there was not a deliberate top-down attempt to cover up because at the time china was under this kind of surprise attack from the en and totally unknown virus there do seem to be those some harsh examples of those who wanted to speak being told that they couldn't being warned being imprisoned i should say that that was also a kind of in response from the local level because you know at the time you know people were simply you know panicking so we should not be you know interpreting this kind of you know act as a kind of nefarious deliberate you know malicious acts to cover the interesting app i think we need to remember that there's chinese who are in the ministries who i have always found to be very interested in exactly what's going on but then there may be minor officials who don't want to be the bearer of bad tidings and they may also have prevented china from uh talking to who early on so there are two chinas there's the local authorities that didn't respond fast enough and then there's the beijing authorities and the local authorities should have acted faster i want to go one step back why did the world not take this seriously because they were misinformed i don't believe that you know why why can i ask are you where are you going are you suggesting that they were misinformed by whom about the seriousness of the virus by the official chinese government information that was being provided to who and the rest of the world that said initially this wasn't a human transmissible virus that there were only limited number of cases in woohan we now know that both of those things were completely incorrect that they knew it was transmissible at the same time as the rest of the world were being told in fact through who this is not a human to human transmissible virus i think this is quite unfair to say that china was deliberately withholding the fact that actually there was a human to human infection because it was actually quite timely because it the chinese authorities and also local experts were actually really studying the cases so actually this is really a step-by-step you know process to determine the nature of a totally unknown disease this is an extremely sensitive um issue in china um why because china itself is trying to demonstrate to the world that it's a responsible power that its emergence on the international scene should be seen as legitimate and acceptable it's something that china wants the world to embrace so you add all that together and you can see why on the one hand they would want to be extremely careful and in shaping what the world hears and on the other hand being extremely sensitive and defensive uh to any implica any suggestion from the outside that somehow this is their fault the pandemic for me was this utter failure in the ideal of international cooperation you know it wasn't an alien invasion but it was kind of like an alien invasion right where you'd think that all the countries of the world would come together and there'd be a multinational force to fight the enemy but it didn't happen instead what we saw was international bickering finger-pointing blame shifting because of geopolitics i would add to that jason that covert 19 simply intensified what was already well in motion and so you pour gasoline basically onto that burning fire of an alien invasion and it just exacerbates the whole problem coming up will we ever know the source of the virus was it a natural accident or was it a lab accident rarely does someone who's committed the murder say i did it that's next on under investigation [Music] we began tonight's debate asking could this pandemic have been caused by a leak from the wuhan lab which until recently was considered a conspiracy theory and has china's other actions during this last terrible year been rightly condemned or are we guilty of a global blame game [Music] what our experts agree on is this there are legitimate questions the world still needs answers to about the origins of the virus and that includes the role if any played by the bat virus that killed three copper miners eight years before the [Music] pandemic legitimate questions too about the research carried out by the wuhan institute of virology and its use of controversial genetic engineering that can create deadly viruses inside a land if we are engineering a virus that could wipe out humankind it is literally like we're building the death star and if something goes wrong then everybody dies it's to be decided whether the world health organization soon to release its final report into the origin of the virus can be trusted to carry out an independent investigation where i get concerned is that the word independent is simply not really accurate this is not an independent organization nor an independent investigation and there are still doubts as to whether china is as determined as the rest of the world in finding out where the virus came from and how it turned into a pandemic if the virus is out there in nature ultimately we should find it the longer it takes and we don't find it the more we have to think it came from somewhere else similarly unless someone you know puts their hand up and says you know mia culpa i was culturing that virus and it somehow it it leaked out we're going to end up with a probability like we do even in criminal law cases rarely does someone who's committed the murder say i did it oh look i agree what i don't agree is about the blame about how it was done politically we all want to know what might have occurred so that it can be prevented because we will get another pandemic today we have been talking a lot about hypothesis about a leakage about the origin of the uh the the virus but mine is the most important thing i think is concrete step-by-step research whatever happened here was accidental um there's there's no evidence that china tried to manipulate or release any virus into the population so we have to think of it as an accident was it a natural accident or was it a lab accident i don't care how many scientists step up and say it was this this is the reason we have definitive proof there's going to be people out there that simply will not accept it uh and perhaps even for geopolitical reasons not do so even if the who says maybe even more so i'd say we may not ever get to how it really started but what we've really learnt is the importance of how you respond the real tension in all of this for me is this choice between cooperation and conflict and my hope that what we can learn from this is that choosing to cooperate is always a better path than choosing to have a big fight for all of the questions we've discussed here tonight there is the hope that soon they will be questions of history and that the question of where the virus came from will become less important than how we finally defeated it thank you all very much for joining me i'm liz hayes good night hello i'm liz hayes thanks for watching our brand new event series under investigation subscribe to our channel now for more great stories from both under investigation and 60 minutes australia for other exclusive under investigation content visit nine now dot com dot a u and the nine now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 2,797,923

Rating: 4.609653 out of 5

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, china, chinese, covid, COVID, covid-19, virus, disease, vaccine, lab, conspiracy, man made, bats, wet, market, animals, spread, contagious, donald trump, joe biden, vax, anti-vax

Id: zgTeNFIY-b0

Length: 42min 26sec (2546 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Redd868]

I first leaned towards the lab leak hypothesis when Dr. Peter Daszak tweeted that Pres. Biden was putting on a charade and U.S. intelligence agencies couldn't be trusted.
But, it is Dr. Daszak's project abstract for 2018 that strenthens the case. This project abstract covers the time between July 2018 thru June 2019, which was 5 months before the outbreak.

Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice.

Yep, "humanized mice". Repeatedly passing the virus through generations of humanized mice would explain how a virus would be optimized for human to human transmission. And they've been telling us that asympomatic people can spread the virus, so, a lab worker could have become infected, not know it, and spread the virus in his off-duty hours.

Per Dr. Daszak, that lab was doing everything needed to create that virus. For some reason, people have been looking at the 2019 project (spanning Jul 2019-Jun 2020), but the 2018 project abstract contains as much of a smoking gun as we're likely to find.

[u/AngryIrishBull]

There is never going to be 100% proof, regardless of if it’s true or not. Will only get more and more suspicious the longer we go without a official source. It just makes you wonder though, not conclusive by any means, how china was able to stop infections without knowing the source? It’s almost as the source was dealt with, but we have little information on the original source. I don’t think there is anymore evidence that can link it to the lab, just curious to see if it remains a mystery until people just “forget” about covid.

[u/nonmetaljacket]

Excellent program. Clear, concise, everyone should see this.

[u/DreamSofie]

There has yet to be any mention that the sars-like-cov originally infecting the miners, could have made a recombination with normal human coronas, thus negating the "need" for anything like years of natural mutations, or, an intermediary animal host.